DA Head works with Control Dailies, Control Color and Convey to form a “true” tapeless environment for data.

PROVIDENCE, RI— At the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters Convention, MTI Film will debut a new option for its award-winning Control Dailies solution. The DA Head module for Control Dailies enables the faster-than-real-time power of Control Dailies to facilitate the processing of digitally-acquired dailies from virtually any source. Control Dailies for Digital Acquisition (DA) supports Red One, Panasonic P2, Panavision Genesis, Viper FilmStream and Arri D-21 digital cinema cameras, as well as media in DPX file format.

MTI Film will be exhibiting at NAB booth SL11116. Its new DA Head option for Control Dailies is available for delivery beginning in April. Control Dailies DA is available as a standalone system or the DA Head module can be integrated into an existing Control Dailies system.

“File-based cameras and scanners require powerful hardware and software processing to prepare raw recordings for editorial and finishing,” said MTI Film Product Manager David McClure. “Our new DA Head option for Control Dailies is the answer, providing fast, high quality conversion to HD or SD from Red Code and other file formats directly to the Control Dailies SAN.”

Significantly, Control Dailies DA can be used as part of the larger Control Dailies ecosystem — with Control Color and Convey—to form a complete, tapeless solution for processing digitally-acquired dailies. In this workflow, the DA Head is used to ingest and decode digitally-acquired source media. Control Color is then employed to perform primary color correction or to apply LUTs prepared during production. Control Dailies is used to synchronize audio and lay-off up to three output streams to HD or standard definition tape as, simultaneously, Convey prepares required digital deliverables , such as DNxHD for editorial and DVD or Blu-Ray for dailies review.

“Color correction is applied on the output, and it’s done in real-time with no time lost for rendering,” noted McClure. “The workflow can be configured to apply or not to apply color correction to individual output streams. You can create a high definition master tape for archival purposes while, at the same time, producing color corrected streams for editorial and dailies screening.” McClure added that primary color correction performed via Control Color is ASC CDL compliant to ensure complete control over the look of the film thanks to compatibility with other standard post-production systems.

“The system can be configured to the individual needs of the user,” McClure said. “It can be employed in a multi-workstation environment organized around a SAN with ingest, color correction, syncing and output happening simultaneously. Alternatively, it can be deployed on a single workstation with direct attached storage with ingest, color correction and output occurring in linear order.”

Algorithms developed by MTI Film for the DA Head have resulted in faster decoding and resolution conversion for certain types of digitally-acquired media files. The system’s ability to decode Bayer filter patterns, for example, allows for the real-time processing of Red camera files.

“All of the services and features that can be done for film dailies are now available for Red files, and other digital media, through Control Dailies,” McClure observed.